USDA Entering Fight Against Citrus Greening

By KEVIN BOUFFARDTHE LEDGER

Thursday

Dec 12, 2013 at 9:31 AMDec 13, 2013 at 2:52 AM

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced "a new, unified emergency response framework" to coordinate scientific research and other aspects of the fight against the deadly bacterial disease in all citrus-producing states.

WINTER HAVEN | At perhaps the gloomiest time in the eight-year battle against citrus greening, a ray of hope emerged.The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced "a new, unified emergency response framework" to coordinate scientific research and other aspects of the fight against the deadly bacterial disease in all citrus-producing states.The framework comes with an additional $1 million in spending, but Mike Sparks, chief executive at Florida Citrus Mutual in Lakeland, said he hopes the announcement will create new momentum to create a proposed Citrus Disease Research and Development Trust Fund. It would contribute up to $30 million annually over five years to greening research."This couldn't have come at a better time," said Sparks, head of the state's largest growers' organization, about the USDA announcement. "We're appreciative that (U.S. Secretary of Agriculture) Tom Vilsac has recognized the ≠urgency of the fight against greening in all citrus-producing states and that he's restructuring his organization to recognize that."Legislation sponsored by Florida's U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is part of the Senate version of the new Farm Bill currently being negotiated by a Congressional conference committee. The U.S. House of Representatives' version of the Farm Bill did not contain a provision for the trust fund.The House and Senate failed to reach agreement on a new Farm Bill when Congress adjourned last year, but they extended the deadline into the current session. Earlier this week, conferees said they were close to agreement but extended the deadline again to Jan. 31.Sparks and Ryan Brown, Nelson's press secretary, confirmed the trust fund is still on the table in the Farm Bill negotiations.During a Thursday afternoon phone news conference from his Washington office to discuss the greening initiative, Vilsac seized on the opportunity to press House and Senate conferees to conclude the multiyear effort on a new Farm Bill, which will set spending and policies for his department over the next five years."I feel like a groom at the altar, and I keep looking down the aisle waiting for the bride," Vilsac said. "Based on conversations I've had recently, she's in the church, but we need to get her down the aisle."Vilsac declined to give his unambiguous endorsement to including the Citrus Trust Fund in the Farm Bill, but neither did he definitively oppose it."The president quite clearly said when the Senate passed its version of the Farm Bill he agreed with it on a number of issues," he said. "We will be happy to work with Sen. Nelson and the Congress if they think it's worthy of support."The new greening initiative came two days after the USDA released the first monthly update on its initial Nov. 8 projection of the 2013-14 Florida citrus crop. Tuesday's report cast a pall among Florida citrus growers because it suggests a return of greening-related pre-harvest fruit drop.The new report lowered the projected Florida orange crop by 4 million boxes, or 3 percent, in just one month. It also reduced the projected 2013-14 Florida grapefruit crop by 1.1 million boxes, down 6 percent, to 16.7 million boxes and the estimated tangerine harvest by 4 percent to 3.6 million boxes.The report attributes the reductions to record low fruit size and record high pre-harvest drop. The consensus among growers and other Florida citrus officials is that both phenomenon relate to trees weakened by greening.Greening, which eventually kills a citrus tree, is spread by a common insect in Florida called the Asian citrus psyllid, which hosts the bacteria. The disease first surfaced in Homestead in 2005 and quickly spread to all citrus producing counties within three years, arriving in Polk County in 2007.Growers believed they had an effective, temporary solution to limiting greening's damage by using fertilizer supplements to improve tree and fruit health and monthly pesticide sprays to tamp down psyllid populations. Before greening, three to four annual pesticide applications were the common practice.Those strategies appeared to work until last season, which for the first time saw unprecedented rates of pre-harvest drop from infected trees. The USDA reduced its initial 2012-13 Florida orange projection more than 13 percent as the season progressed, ending at 133.6 million boxes by the harvest's end in June.Many growers said they hoped the problem was a single-season event, but Tuesday's updated projection appears to have dashed those hopes. Replacing optimism is a frustration that growers have no effective measures against greening and no breakthroughs in the immediate future.Testing all 69 million Florida citrus trees for greening infection would be too expensive and impractical. Most officials believe greening already infects a vast majority of Florida citrus trees and will soon reach 100 percent.The new USDA effort originated in an Aug. 1 meeting in Washington between top USDA officials and representatives of the Florida, Texas and California citrus industries, said Sparks, who was at the meeting."We expressed our concerns the U.S. Department of Agriculture recognize the urgency of greening," Sparks said. "The thought was if we could have a staffer assigned to primary responsibility on greening-related issues that it could cut through the clutter."Vilsac has appointed Mary Palm, assistant director for quarantine policy analysis and support at USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, to lead the effort. She is joined by a team that includes representatives from the department's Agriculture Research Service, which has a research lab in Fort Pierce, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the USDA division that finances and assists state-level agricultural research.The group will work with state departments of agriculture and local citrus organizations, according to a USDA statement."It will provide industry with a single contact for all the federal and state entities that work on citrus issues and better enable the collective to collaborate on policy decisions, establish priorities, allocate critical resources and collect, analyze and disseminate information," the statement said.It also will "help coordinate federal research with industry's efforts to complement and fill research gaps, reduce unnecessary duplication, speed progress and more quickly provide practical tools for citrus growers to use."Ken Keck, president of the California Citrus Research Board and former executive director of the Florida Department of Citrus for five years ending in August 2011, said the greening initiative was needed to improve coordination among the various USDA and other federal agencies that will play key roles in the coming rollout of new technologies against greening. It can also improve coordination among the citrus states.Keck cited promising research on breeding new citrus trees that resist infection and on using a genetically modified virus to introduce agents to kill the bacteria in the tree. State and federal regulators will have to approve those new technologies, he said, and the USDA initiative could help speed up the process."My hope is this new group doesn't just talk to itself but reaches across the divides that separate those agencies," Keck said.

[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980. Read more on Florida citrus on his Facebook page, Florida Citrus Witness, http://bit.ly/baxWuU. ]

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